Occasionally, the awesome folks at the Portland Opera invite a bunch of cartoonists (incl. yrs. truly) to come watch dress rehearsals and sketch whatever we want.
On Monday, the Opera invited us to the dress rehearsal of "Candide." (Everyone's Twitter posts from the evening are collected here and at #pdxcandide. The Opera is rounding up everyone's drawings here.) As usual, I speed-drew a "live comics adaptation" of the show, during the show. When the lights came up, I put down my pen.
The resulting comic is after the jump.
The overture features a big projected photo of composer Leonard Bernstein
Act One. Welcome to Westphalia! Meet Candide. He is an idiot
He is an idiot because of his optimistic teacher, Dr. Pangloss
Pangloss, humping offstage, gives young Candide and Cunégonde ideas
Ham-fistedly trying to emulate Pangloss-sex doesn't work out so well
And so Candide is exiled by Cunégonde's brother and then shanghaied into the Bulgar army
War-crimes against (or maybe just massacres of) the Westphalians occur
Candide wanders by, sees that Cunégonde is "dead" (more on this later), is maybe less happy now
Oh hey he runs into Pangloss -- now with Humpty Hump Nose but still spouting hopelessly optimistic bullcorn
Candide and Pangloss get on a boat and argue w/ an Anabaptist (who drowns)
They go to Lisbon and a volcano erupts and kills thousands of people and oh hey now Candide and Pangloss are getting arrested and tried for religious crimes
Pangloss tries to sing his way out of the noose. It doesn't work out so much
And then, in the most abrupt scene transition of all time
In Paris, this woman's life sucks (sort of)
To lighten her mood, an Old Lady servant comes out and drapes her with jewelry like she was Mr. T. It helps!
In wanders Candide. Oh hey it's Cunégonde that woman he thought was dead. Neat
Candide accidentally stabs one of the dudes who share her (sexually)
Annnd then he stabs the other one
They flee. The Old Lady servant one-ups everyone w/ her hard-luck stories
A HIT SINGLE ENSUES I THINK OR MAYBE JUST A DANCE
And then Candide decides to go to America he is still an idiot END OF ACT ONE
Act Two! Meet the governor of Buenos Aires. Bit of a playboy, he
The guv takes a shine to Cunégonde after she and Candide show up. THE GUV SWOOPS IN AND CANDIDE WANDERS OFF
Three years later, the guv is still stringing Cunégonde along, and their pre-marriage totally sucks
Meanwhile, Candide and his valet Cacambo just sort of straight-up stumble onto El Dorado
And the fine people of El Dorado give them some golden sheep and a hot-air balloon WHY NOT
Candide lands in a Dutch colony and finds out the sugar industry is a total sweatshop CUE CYNICAL SONG
Also: The Dutch guy who trades Candide a gold sheep for a leaky boat? TOTAL DICK
And so Candide nevertheless somehow gets to Venice and runs into everyone from earlier
At the casino where Candide looks for Cunégonde, everyone is masked and a nihilist or something
At the casino: Cunégonde (masked) tries to rip off Candide (masked)
The masks come off. Everyone recognizes each other. Candide is basically appalled
And they lived sort-of-unhappily ever after THE END JESUS
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Thanks again to the Portland Opera for another delightful evening. "Candide" (which is well worth an evening out) plays May 11, 13, 17 at 19 at the Keller Auditorium. You can get half-price tickets at this link if you use the password GLITTER.
ALSO:
- #pdxcandide Twitter hashtag from the evening
- The Portland Opera's collection of tweets as a blog post
WORK BY OTHER COMICS FOLK IN ATTENDANCE:
- The Portland Opera's roundup post of artwork from the evening
- Barry Deutsch
- Trixie Biltmore
- Dylan Meconis
- Joëlle Jones
- Ron Chan
- Adrian Wallace
- Cat Farris
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